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Untitled Document Questions and Answers with NATO Secretary General, Lord Robertson at the Press Conference Following the Working Session for Allied and Invitee Defence Ministers (Excerpted) October 9, 2003
Q: Good morning. I'm Tom Squitieri with USA Today. Nice to see you again today, sir. My question today is a variation of the one I asked you yesterday.
Lord Robertson: Always keen to get variations. It's very boring if they're the same, you know.
Q: I had the opportunity to look at what the Russians put out last week regarding the use of nuclear weapons in a first pre-emptive strike and it was lot more clearer than we left it yesterday.
My question today, sir, is how can NATO ask the Russians not to have such a policy of pre-emptive strikes with nuclear weapons when the United States, a member of NATO, has such a policy?
Lord Robertson: Minister Sergey Ivanov addressed that in the meeting I had with him this morning and I fully expect him to expand on it in the meetings that we have with him this afternoon when he said that that is not correct, that NATO... that Russia does not have and does not seek to have a pre-emptive strategy in relation to its nuclear weapons. So, we'll be discussing that in some detail later on today, but I think there must have been some crossed signals here. And I'd rather hear directly from Minister Ivanov rather than from second-hand reports or even from extremely wise, talented, and usually well-informed journalists.
Q: Sorry, sir, but my question was, you know, how can NATO ask Russia or any nation not to have that kind of policy when the United States has that policy?
Lord Robertson: Well, we have to... it remains to be seen what the Russians are saying at the present moment. We're not involved in a debate here. We discuss common ground. It's known in Russia as obshei panimanya(?) and we seek to expand that common ground as much as we possibly can. And this afternoon, we will be doing so.
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Q: Paul Ames from the Associated Press. Secretary General, did defence minister Ivanov explain to your satisfaction the statement... or the document from his ministry last week which spoke about NATO as an offensive and anti-Russian organization? And secondly, could I just make sure that I understood correctly what you said earlier about Bosnia, that it'll be at least another 12 months before the EU takes over that mission.
Lord Robertson: Well, I didn't see any report where the Russians actually said that NATO was an offensive and anti-Russian organization. There were reports that said that if NATO developed in a certain way, militarily, and developed in a certain way geographically Russia would have to face up to that fact. But in any event whatever the reports say, Minister Sergey Ivanov came along today with a very bulky English translation of the whole document and we expect him this afternoon to highlight what is in that document.
But he himself, this morning, personally said that these reports are not accurate. They don't regard NATO as being an offensive organization. They regard NATO as being a partner to Russia at the present time. And one of the things that we were discussing today was the reciprocity and having military liaison missions in NATO and in Moscow.
So it doesn't seem to me to be very accurate for anybody in Russia to be saying that NATO was aggressive or offensive or anti-Russian, when we're actually down to that level of detail in terms of military-to-military co-operation.
But you know, we're going to have some substantial time today to discuss these matters, and I think Minister Ivanov is having a press conference later on in the afternoon so you can check my version against his version and then you can write a third version.
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